After an accident or loss, property owners typically file claims with their insurance companies. In response to these claims, insurance agents or representatives investigate the claims to determine the extent of damage and/or loss, ultimately providing their clients with appropriate compensation.
Often, the claim investigations can be time-consuming, difficult and even dangerous for the insurance agents or representatives. For example, to investigate a claim for damage to a homeowner's roof, an insurance representative may have to climb onto the roof and perform inspections while on the roof. When climbing on the roof and attempting to maneuver around the roof for the inspection, the insurance representative runs a risk of injury, especially in difficult weather conditions, where the roof may be slippery because of rain, snow, and/or ice and winds may be severe.
Even if the insurance representative inspects without getting injured, performing the investigation may still be time-consuming. For example, in situations where the insurance company has received a large number of claims in a short time period, e.g., when a town is affected by a hurricane, tornado, or other natural disaster, the representative may not have time to perform timely claim investigations of all the received claims. If claim investigations are not performed quickly, property owners may not receive recovery for their losses for long periods of time. Additionally, long time delays when performing claim investigations can lead to inaccurate investigation results, e.g., the delay may lead to increased opportunity for fraud and/or may make it more difficult to ascertain the extent of damage at the time of the accident or loss.
To address such issues, insurance representatives are increasingly using remote-controlled devices to survey, film and/or take pictures of damaged property, such as on a roof or other difficult to inspect area, without having to walk onto the roof or other area. However, current Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations may limit and/or prevent the use of such devices in the air for commercial purposes. More specifically, while remote devices have limited range and altitude, there is a small potential for interference with national airspace and potential mid-air collisions during operation, especially if the remote devices are operating around or near an airport. As a result, tethers are being used with commercially used remote-controlled devices to avoid conflicts with current FAA regulations.
Controlling such tethered devices, however, presents its own set of problems. For example, tree limbs, electrical wires, and other obstacles are often between the target area where the device is needed, such as a roof, and the origin of a tether line. This is a particular challenge when the tethered device is operating on or above a house or other building where the line can get caught in tree limbs and electrical wires.
Untethered devices have a different challenge. While untethered devices can avoid tree limbs and other obstacles that may interfere with a tether line, without a physical tether line, untethered devices run the risk of straying onto a neighbor's property or worse, such as into some irretrievable location like a river or wooded area.